A fascinating, feel-good tale about the unique dogs trained for conservation work.
A shelter dog finds a new job—and a home.
Tucker, a sweet-faced yellow pooch with floppy ears, loves to play. Relentlessly energetic and unintentionally destructive, he’s a poor fit for most families. After he’s returned to the animal shelter yet again, a worker warns prospective adopters that Tucker is “trouble.” Then he meets Laura, a trainer who sees something special in him. She starts by using Tucker’s favorite toy to teach him to find flowers among a row of cinder blocks. As Laura introduces new scents into the game, she’s able to channel Tucker’s curiosity, intensity, and obsessive focus on play into the skills necessary to locate invasive species and track rare or endangered creatures around the world. Vibrant watercolors capture Tucker in constant motion, whether in trashed living rooms or the jungles of Myanmar. The text, perfect for reading out loud, conveys Tucker’s boundless capacity for destruction (“Rrr-rip! Splat! CRACK!”), dedication to his new assignment (“He zigzagged across the ground…and kept searching until…There!”), and bond with Laura (“‘Keep looking,’ Laura said. ‘I trust Tucker’”). With humor, heart, suspense, and adventure, this story will win over animal lovers of all ages. Laura is light-skinned with brown hair; background characters are diverse. Backmatter notes that the book is based on the experiences of the real-life founders of Working Dogs for Conservation.
A fascinating, feel-good tale about the unique dogs trained for conservation work. (selected bibliography, photos) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780802855817
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on.
Sharpson offers so-fish-ticated readers a heads up about the true terror of the seas.
The title says it all. Our unseen narrator is just fine with other animals: mammals. Reptiles. Even birds. But fish? Don’t trust them! First off, the rules always seem to change with fish. Some live in fresh water; some reside in salt water. Some have gills, while others have lungs. You can never see what they’re up to, since they hang out underwater, and they’re always eating those poor, innocent crabs. Soon, the narrator introduces readers to Jeff, a vacant-eyed yellow fish—but don’t be fooled! Jeff’s “the craftiest fish of all.” All fish are, apparently, hellbent on world domination, the narrator warns. “DON’T TRUST FISH!” Finally, at the tail end, we get a sly glimpse of our unreliable narrator. Readers needn’t be ichthyologists to appreciate Sharpson’s meticulous comic timing. (“Ships always sink at sea. They never sink on land. Isn’t that strange?”) His delightful text, filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly, pairs perfectly with Santat’s art, which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity. He also fills the book with his own clever gags (such as an image of Gilligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow going down and a bottle of sauce labeled “Surly Chik’n Srir’racha’r”).
A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593616673
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
